Calvert DeForest, known as Larry “Bud” Melman on the David Letterman show, passed away on March 19th. He was 85.
I’ve loved Letterman for years and I miss having Calvert on. He was always a riot, in an embarrassing sort of way.
So long Larry.
More pictures, an interview, Wikipedia, IMDB.

From Crunchy Con Ron Dreher:

Is it just me, or did it strike anyone else that James Cameron announces the premiere of a documentary film that claims to prove that the central claim of Christianity … is utter garbage … and Christians worldwide fail to burn embassies, call for Cameron’s murder, or say much of anything.
… So I guess … there really is no difference between conservative Christian leaders and their Muslim counterparts. My bad.

[link]

Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons and blogger over at beliefnet, had an editorial on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon that was excellent. He and I are the same age (he’s got me by 6 months actually) and he relates his experience growing up as a Conservative, his first awareness of politics being Carter and the Iranian hostage crisis, Reagan as his political hero of sorts, his lack of understanding the hippies of the 60’s and more.
I can totally relate to his experience, from being a full blown conservative believer all the way up to Bush’s election (well, almost) to the (ironic) disillusionment with the administration and the war in Iraq. I can’t do it justice, go give it a listen (the button at the top of the page).

… but I voted for a Democrat today. Actually, I voted for six. Now, before my more left leaning friends get too excited (and Mom has a coronary, she does read the blog), they were 2 appeals court judges and four somewhat minor posts like auditor and secretary of state, but still, I think they’re the first Democrats I’ve ever voted for.
I actually tried to consider Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate for Governor, but nearly every statement I read from him was a lot of words for little meaning. What was he going to do if elected? I have no idea, but he talked a lot about what he knew, what he thought and the dialog he would have with folks about stuff. Knowledge, thoughts and talking, but no action. And, I liked much of what Ken Blackwell had to say.
I also looked seriously at Mark DannSharrod Brown (Oops) for Senate over Mike DeWine. I was not happy with the harsh, smearing tone of DeWine’s campaign and I liked some of the things I heard in Brown’s commercials. (Yeah, I said commercials). In the end, I couldn’t go along with his belief that all Medicare funding should be taken out of the hands of the states and given to the feds as a solution to the health care problems. I’m definitely in the ‘more local control’ camp rather than the ‘more federal control’ camp, and that statement told me what Dann’s philosophy is. I think that states and municipalities know better what their constituents need than he feds do.
So, there’s my election day political post. I’ll try to stay out of politics for a couple of years now.

Check out 2,996:

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers
will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.
We will honor them by remembering their lives,
and not by remembering their murderers.

They’ve actually got over 3,000 bloggers signed up. Each s writing a post about one of the victims of that day 5 years ago. The list is here. What a great idea and I only wish I had heard of it in time to participate. That’s a powerful use for the thousands of blogs out there, most (like this one) of little consequence. Thanks to Bill (De) at The Thinklings for the link.

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I can remember growing up my parents and those in their generation telling us how they all knew right where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was shot. They all would recount with detail where they were at that time.
9/11 is like that for me and my generation, it’s as if we were right there.
I remember, at my job we had a meeting each morning to review the day’s activities. In that meeting on 9/11, it must have been at 9:00 AM, one of the guys in the shop had heard fro his wife that some idiot in a Cessna had flown his plane into the World trade Center. We laughed at how stupid that was. It wasn’t long, as the details became known, that we stopped laughing. It wasn’t stupid at all. It was coldly smart, cunning, calculated and evil.
We tried to get some work done. Instead, with no TV in the office, we kept hitting refresh on CNN.com and listened to NPR news, trying to see and hear the latest. I remember CNN.com and other sites having streamlined front pages to load faster to handle more traffic.
I remember the plane hitting the Pentagon and wondering, dear God, what was happening. I thought of a possible World War III, my family at home, what would be next. I was genuinely scared by the prospects.
I remember being in line at Big Bear grocery store, buying M&M’s when the first tower fell. We had a project for a bulk food bin manufacturer to design a dispenser for M&M’s and we had eaten all our test samples and needed more. As I stood there buying several pounds of M&M’s I watched the TV set up in the isle as Tower 1 fell. The M&M’s didn’t seem to matter much.
After work, I remember being glued to a Aaron Brown on CNN who’s calm, personal, conversational delivery was both odd and somehow reassuring. I think he had just started on CNN the day before or something. I stayed up half the night, like a train wreck, I couldn’t look away. I think I did the same for several nights in a row.

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I have other memories of the World trade center on this anniversary day. Over 10 years before 9/11, I lived in NYC on an internship during my college senior year. These pictures, digipics of 35mm prints, are from that time.
The first is a scrawny, single me (with some strange fuzzy stuff growing on top of my head) and a sister named Amy, on a date. I don’t remember Amy’s last name, and the picture just says Amy. I guess I thought I’d remember her forever. It was taken on Ellis Island, looking back at Manhattan. I had forgotten how the WTC dominated the skyline.
The second, I believe, is from later on that same date, up on the top of the WTC, looking down on the city. That’s the East river and the Brooklyn Bridge in the background and those are 30, 40 , 50 story buildings in the foreground. Being up there was amazing. I could have spent hours looking down and examining the buildings and streets.
The last is the view of the second tower from the first, in the glow of a mid-winter sunset. We stayed up there through sunset that evening and it was phenomenal. We watched the lights come on and the city grow dark.
I went up again, later that winter of 1991, when Mom and Dad came to pick me up after my job was done. Nearly 11 years, later, just weeks after 9/11, Mom and Dad flew to NYC for the Macy’s thanksgiving day parade. Mom was dancing in it. They visited ground zero, still smoking. There were armed guards preventing picture taking, out of respect I guess. Dad had to break the nail file off of his nail trimmers before getting on the plane. The nail file, on a little pivot, would be near useless as a weapon, but then again, who ever thought a box cutter was a formidable weapon before 9/11.
After coming home, Dad remarked how strange it was to look up in the empty sky and think, I stood up there once. Way up there, in the now empty air and clear blue sky, high above all the other structures, he, Mom and I once stood. Now there was nothing to stand on.

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What do you remember?

Woo-Hoo!

Ikea will build a 300,000 or 350,000 square-foot store on a large vacant parcel adjacent to southbound Interstate 75 off Muhlhauser and Allen roads [just north of Cincinnati]

I’ve never been to an Ikea store, but I’ve eyed their catalogs and wanted to. The 3.5 hour trek to the nearest one in Pittsburgh or 4 hours to the new one in Canton MI (although it’s only about an hour from Mom and Dad …) has kept me away. This new store should be about 1.5 hours from my house, so maybe I’ll get some cheap-but-stylish, Swedish-designed, ready-to-assemble furniture.

Hat tip: OHIKEA